Difficulty Modes in Divinity: Original Sin 2 determine the level of challenge players face during the Story campaign.
DOS2 Difficulty Modes
Story Mode
- The player gets +100% Vitality, +100% Damage, +50% Armor, +50% Magic Armor, 5% boost to Chances to Hit, 5% boost to Dodge.
- NPCs get -40% Vitality, -50% Damage, -50% Armor, -50% Magic Armor, 15% penalty to Chances to Hit.
- Normal A.I.
- Start with an ability to resurrect allies with 100% Vitality.
Explorer Mode
- The player gets +50% Vitality, +50% Damage, +30% Armor, +30% Magic Armor, 5% boost to Chances to Hit, 5% boost to Dodge.
- NPCs get -20% Vitality, -30% Damage, -30% Armor, -30% Magic Armor, 15% penalty to Chances to Hit.
- Normal A.I.
Classic Mode
- No player alterations.
- No NPC alterations.
- Normal A.I.
Tactician Mode
- No player alterations.
- NPCs get +50% Vitality, +50% Damage, +2% Damage boost per/lvl, +50% Armor, +1.5% Armor Growth per/lvl, +35% Magic Armor, +1.5% Magic Armor Growth per/lvl, 10% boost to Chances to Hit.
- Enemies have more AP, skills (speculation)
- Different merchant prices (equivalent to -2 Bartering)
- Smart A.I.
Honour Mode: Selected after difficulty mode. Failure is not an option. Raise the stakes by limiting any modes to a single save game. If your entire party perishes, the save game is erased and your quest is well and truly over! Hardcore.
AnonymousTo change the difficulty between Classic & Tactician, you can use this Save Editor :
"NovFR/DoS-2-Savegame-Editor Version 1.2.0.0"
Then :
1. Menu File > open > (Username) > Next > yourSaveGame
2.1 Menu Advanced > Show Metadata's tree
2.2 open save > region > node > children > node > attribute[id=Difficulty]
2.3 Right click on value="..." > Modify value (2:classic, 3:Tactician)
3. Menu File > Save
if you think that the NPCs Stats from the Tactician mode is way too exagerated, you can use the mod "Classic Tactician Stats" that will keep everything from the Tactician mode, except the stats.
- Anonymous
For those seeking a challenge, Honour mode is pretty okay'ish.
Its far away from being impossible, not even "really really hard", you just need to pick fights a bit more careful than just running head in.
Did my run a few years ago and got the achievement as one of the first 30 people worldwide.
Can really recommend that doing with your friend in lone wolf mode! Quite a good experience ! :)
- Anonymous
Just finished my first for honor playthrough (didn’t use lone wolf or teleportation glitch), and I gotta say it definitely was hard. I ended the run with over 100 res scrolls but the possibility of a party wipe always felt like it was on the table. Some enemies definitely felt like they did a bit too much damage even if I was on or even above level. I think doing a playthrough of this mode is impossible if you don’t perfectly optimize and know every encounter or cheese your way through some fights but if you’re willing to do either than I’d say give it a go. Any newcomers reading this be sure to not do it on a first playthrough!
Summoning was definitely the mvp of my Run, also I gained a newfound appreciation for shields
- Anonymous
tactician feels like classic when you're lone wolf, even in solo
- Anonymous
Can't there be a difficulty between Explorer and Classic? Or Classic and Tactician for that matter? These jumps are rather awkward.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
The difficulty settings in this game are, to put it mildly, strange. I am a very experienced DnD player, having beating Solasta Cataclysm blind and other unbalanced stuff like that, so I went in straight for Tactical mode.
Long story short, I got penetrated butt to skull so violently, by the end of level 3 I rerolled a new save on Classic mode... only to find out Classic mode is a complete joke. The difficulty gap is absolutely astonishing, it doesn't even feel like the same game. I assume with better gear the game becomes a lot less ridiculous, but in Tactical I found my melees regularly dieing in a single turn, to a single enemies basic attacks, forcing me to resort to really degenerate tactics. I guess, running away and chaining ccs is tactical, but is it fun?
I wish there was a 5th difficulty between Classic and Tactical for Veterans, with Smart AI and more health but the same damage, so careful party planning, positioning and cooldown management could prevail, without the need to apply a Swiss vaults level of cheese. Or maybe I am just spoiled from 5e and need to git gud.
- Anonymous
Nothing wrong with easier difficulties. Might try playing with my dad who is not adept in video games and easier difficulty is nice for a coop game with him.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
The easiest way to finish honour mode is a party with two elven archers. Kinda pale gameplay, but i got achievment
- Anonymous
Just got back into the game to get it off my backlog, got into a fight & ended up with 3/4 party members dead, ehhh I think i'll just go story & then go classic if I decide to play it again
- Anonymous
I don't understand the comments, I guess you're noobs ?
Tactician mode is pretty hard but not horrible, yes you have to reload if you run into a fight like a morron, when you're underleveled. If you keep dying on the same fights, well you are terrible at building efficient characters.
However, mods like Randomization can make an easy fight extremely difficult
- Anonymous
I just finished a tactician run in 2022. It's broken without lone wolf. Sorry to say, but the game is not balanced at all for this mode, and there is actually a video of Sven (lead developer) saying they don't spend time balancing this. Play at your own risk.
A lot of cheese will be necessary unless you want to spend an ungodly time reloading. Abusing teleport pyramids to refill source, running out and back into combat, abusing enemy pathing, teleporting enemies to their death, etc. Enemies regularly alpha strike you into oblivion if you don't position your characters correctly. A lot of times you need to make sure the other three are outside of combat so they can get first turn hits.
Incredible game, one of the worst balanced hardest difficulties I've ever played.
- Anonymous
The tactician mode is pretty hard. Any surprise fight could easily wipe out my team. I have to load a lot but I really enjoying it because every battle feel unique and I have to come up with new strategy quite often.
You should choose it only if you don't mind fighting the same battle again and again
- Anonymous
I hate when games come up with stupid ****ing names for difficulty levels and then don't have a tooltip explaining the difference.
- Anonymous
Tactician Mode is like Idiot Mode. My part was hit by a skeleton Assassin in the graveyard (Stonegarden) by 900 damages and the rest deals like 600 damages. They just literally 1 shot Lothe and 2 shot the rest of my party.
Yes, I did some positioning as many people mentioned but it is useless since the skeleton Assassin can teleport right to the back of my Lohse and it deals 900 damages to her :'(
- Anonymous
Holy heck, I am stuck on Tactician mode at lvl 3. We're doing coop second playthrough together (Classic diff was a joke, so we thought let's up it). Now we're stuck on the first big fight, the hound master group (also lvl 3) under FJ square. They do 30-50% of our health/armor per turn. We do 5-10% of theirs. It's TPK in three turns with one bad guy burned down 2/3rds and the rest untouched. This is with food buffs, potions, scrolls, every piece of armor we could buy from collecting every bucket and shell in the opening area. And we use the dialogue loop-hole to position and buff prior to combat, and backstab when it pops off. There aren't many other quests to get us close to lvl 4, and those there are involve similar fights. Not sure how we could have breezed through Classic TPKing once or twice but reached such a brick wall this early on. It's not like our builds are wrong or gear is too low. We're level 3. Does this difficulty just require a bunch of attempts and hoping for one lucky string of misses and crits? I'm confident with more levels we could get this, but this first hurdle... sheesh.
- Anonymous
Is there a way to change the difficulty to Tactician once you have already started a play through at a lower difficulty? My friend and I are doing a lone wolf playthrough and it feels too easy on Classic.
- Anonymous
Hm.. Weird they dont include a mode where neither NPC's or PC's get any alterations, but still with the smarter AI (Classic+ if you will). Seems like it would be the perfect middle :o
- Anonymous
My first playthrough is on tactician mode didn't enjoy it at all.
my current playthrough is on classic now and it's a pushover, now I'm in this weird limbo between wanting to go back to tactician mode or stick to classic :(
- Anonymous
Anyone ever try going solo class with a party of four? Each character picks one skill tree and that’s where you put your points. Just a little Final Fantasy Tactics challenge.
- Anonymous
I don’t understand how I’m almost at Alexander in tactician mode and haven’t died once but I’ve played classic with a few times and I’ve had WAY harder fights in classic. I’m running a 4 man party, is that the reason maybe? Should I be running a 2 man party?
- Anonymous
This information was copied from a mod of the difficulties, and isn't accurate for the base and DE versions of DSO2. Please take this information with a grain of salt.
- Anonymous
Me and a friend have been co-oping this game the past few days. I knew nothing about the game and he started us off in Tactician mode. On one hand the games come down to complete luck as every encounter we come across has the potential to instantly wipe us if we don't already know whats about to happen. On the other hand we had an hour long edge of your seat battle against overwhelming odds that we barely just overcame and I feel like after that, classic would be a breeze. My advice is that Tactician seems to be the difficulty you choose after you've beaten the game once and want a challenge.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Whelp I started the game on tactician mode in my first playthrough and 70 hours in of really trying to figure out everything by myself, I either have to switch to classic or look up build guides and re-specc my characters. Be humble people, this is not just another modern easy game.
- Anonymous
honestly i started on classic and i think the game would be a joke if i played on anything else. if you can tplay on classic then obviously you haven't done enough research on builds or like how the game plays.
- Anonymous
Seems like Classic is a bit too difficult, yet explorer mode is a bit too easy. I am new to this game though.
- Anonymous
classic mode AI turns the game so far off the story with having to leave quests unfinished and returned both Arx and the nameless isle are ruined
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Just as a clarification, the damage boost for tactician is additive with str/Dex/int and other similar damage bonuses so it is not as overwhelming as it looks
- Anonymous
I edited the modes based on game data, i hope it's all correct!
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Are people sure that tactician gives enemies more AP? Loremaster shows them as having a max AP of 6 and starting and turn AP of 4, like usual.
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